Lawmakers and legal experts yesterday called for an investigation into the involvement of Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) Deputy Secretary-General Alex Tsai (蔡正元) in the case of self-confessed Chinese spy William Wang Liqiang (王立強), saying that Tsai breached the Anti-infiltration Act (反滲透法) by allegedly collaborating with China to interfere in the recent presidential and legislative elections.
New Power Party Chairman Hsu Yung-ming (徐永明) said he asked the Taipei District Prosecutors’ Office to initiate an investigation into Tsai, as he believed the evidence showed that China was using its “representative in Taiwan” to meddle in the spy case and influence the outcome of the elections.
The act prohibits people from acting on the instructions of “infiltration sources” or receiving funding from them for illegal lobbying or disrupting elections, “so our judiciary must find out in this case, whether China provided instructions or funding” to Tsai and whether he used threats or money to make Wang recant his story and framed the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) for it, Hsu said.
Photo: Chang Chia-ming, Taipei Times
DPP legislators Lee Chun-yi (李俊俋) and Wang Ding-yu (王定宇) echoed the call, with Lee saying that Tsai appears to have contravened the National Security Act (國家安全法), as well as laws governing elections and referendums.
“Prosecutors only have to find out the role played by Alex Tsai, whether he was acting on behalf of the Chinese government. If so, then he broke the law and this can be prosecuted under the Anti-infiltration Act,” Lee said.
“This case has clear indications of the KMT collaborating with China to work out a deceptive scheme and it tried to falsely accuse the DPP of orchestrating the whole thing,” Wang Ding-yu said in media interviews and on Coco Hot News (辣新聞152), a political affairs program on Formosa TV..
Australian Strategic Policy Institute researcher Alex Joske reported that Tsai worked with Chinese businessman Sun Tianqun (孫天群) to prepare a scripted statement that William Wang Liqiang was requested to read aloud, with Joske presenting screen grabs showing that it was sent out via WeChat and other messaging apps.
According to Joske’s report, Tsai and Sun reportedly said that they represented that KMT and they promised William Wang Liqiang that China would no longer prosecute him and that businesspeople would pay his debts if he recanted the spy claims and followed their instructions.
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